Unit 2 Social Influence

• Prosocial behaviour promotes helping behaviours whereas antisocial behaviour promotes violent behaviours.
• Social AKA Individualist behaviours is about ME.

  • The culture is western and capitalist
  • Individuality, independence & autonomy (self-government) is valued
  • Pleasure seeking with competitiveness from being achievement orientated
  • Motivated to help only those we know (group favouritism - Piliavin) 

  
• Cultural AKA collectivist is about WE:

  • The culture is eastern and communist
  • Being connected, equalitarian (=) & obedient is valued
  • Characteristics are being cooperative, self-controlled (valuing others thoughts link to higher interpersonal regulation)
  • More obedient to authority - Mitri Shanab & Khawla Yahy’s replication of Milgram experiment in collectivists show higher obedience  - although also situational & confounding variable of 6-16 age; maybe young more obedient
  • Bond & Smith’s Asch’s line experiment replication showed collectivists are more likely to conform 
  • Mob/Herd mentality

  
• In the case of locus of control:

  If someone says: The test was flawed. There’s no way to do well. They have an external locus of control.

  If someone says: I must have not studied enough. I can do better next time. They have an internal locus of control.
• The bystander effect is failing to help someone in need despite witnessing the emergency.

  With the bystander affect, from this list: diffusion of responsibility, noticing the event, similarity, pluralistic ignorance, cost of helping, all of these are situational factors apart from similarity. It is a personal factor, like competence (expertise/skill - confidence) and mood.

  
• Deindividuation is the tendency to lose awareness and responsibility when in groups. You become anonymous, and do things that you normally wouldn't do, responsible for antisocial behaviour.

  
• There are 3 types levels of conformity.

  1. Compliance - conforming in public despite not personally agreeing. Because of normative social influence; compliance with the urge to fit in publicly (don’t want to be rejected, so satisfy others).
  2. Identification - temporarily adopting behaviours of a role model/group (lasts as long as the group is present for group membership).
  3. Internalisation - deepest level of conformity where person changes both public behaviour and private beliefs. Because of informational social influence; conforming with lack of information on how to act.

  
• Authority figure is someone with more power who is in charge of others. Obedience is shown to comply with the orders of the authority.

  
• Latané and Darley (1968)’s (smoke room exp) created the Decision Model/Cost of Helping. Whether a person intervenes depends on if the rewards of helping outweighs the cost of helping with the risks.

  
• Social & cultural issues - individualistic vs collectivist cultures’s have different social norms around how to behave, affecting helping behaviour.

  
• A personal factor of bystander effect is that someone with low egocentrism and an internal locus of control will more likely intervene with an altruistic (unselfish) personality type.

  A situational factor of bystander effect is that if someone doesn't define the event as an emergency, they are less likely to intervene.

  
• Conformity is matching the behaviour and or beliefs of others.

  Situational factors:

  • Size of majority
  • Unanimity of majority (agreement)
  • Task difficulty/ambiguity

  Personal factor is locus of control.